Kris Safarova  00:49

Welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and our podcast sponsor today is strategy training.com and we have some gifts for you. You can access episode one from how to build a consulting practice at firms consulting.com forward slash build. You can also get overall approach used in well managed strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach and McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms led to offers, and you can get it at firms consulting.com forward slash resume PDF. And today, we have with us mark Matson, who is back for round two, and he’s a behavioral finance expert and CEO of Matson money, who built a 12 billion investment firm by doing the opposite of Wall Street, teaching people to outsmart their own biology, which is very important topic for us to focus on, especially given all the uncertainty everyone is facing right now in the world. Mark, welcome back. Thank you. Great to be with you. So today, what I would love for us to do is to go through some key insights from your book, and I want to start with an insight you had on that we often build our lives on things we are certain about that simply are not true.

Mark Matson  02:09

Yeah, it’s in the book. I call them screens. So the screen is we don’t actually see the world, and we don’t actually see our place in the world. What we see is screens of how we think the world is, and everybody has different screens, and then we have how we see our place in that world. So it’s a two so it’s a double paradox. So someone who’s an entrepreneur would see the world as a very different way than someone that would see the world having a nine to five job. And I’ll give you an example. So many people think that it’s a safe position to be working for an S and p5 100 company. You know, while they’re strong and they’re large and they have 50,000 employees or 100,000 and I’m safe working there, now, an entrepreneur thinks exactly the opposite, that it’s very dangerous to work in an S and p5 100 company, because you can get your job could get destroyed at any time. You can get laid off, and that you’ll always be held back, and you’ll never be able to scale and really, truly grow. So those so which screen is right? Well, it depends on which screen is going to give you most more power in life the screen that I chose very, very early on, right as I graduated from college, I detested the idea of being a piece of a cog in a major machine where I had very little control over my outcomes in life. Instead, I chose the entrepreneurial path based on the based on the screen that I would have freedom, fulfillment and control over my life as an entrepreneur. So screens are extremely powerful, and for the most part, human beings go around their life not knowing that they have them at all.

Speaker 3  03:52

Mark and how do you think about screens versus beliefs?

Mark Matson  03:56

I think they’re very closely related, but a belief can be very, very singular, like you believe in the earth being round, being a ball, or you believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of the opposite way around. So beliefs can be very limiting. A screen, though, is typically a set of beliefs and a set of conversations that gives you the reality that you see the world through. So beliefs are very powerful too, but it’s easy to to identify a belief. It’s easy. So, so you say, Well, I believe, you know to put money in my 401, K or I believe gold is safer than stocks, so they’re very easy to identify. A screen is a little bit more complex. The way that you identify a screen is you look at the actions that you’re taking in the world. Okay, these are my actions, and then you can back into it and say, Okay, I’m. Person that’s taking these actions in life, whether that’s fitness, health, family, religion, your career, your company, what would a person taking these sets of actions? What would their set of screens have to be that give those actions to be a given? And if you had different screens, sometimes people say, Well, I don’t know how anyone could act like that. Well, if you had those screens, you’d understand, because to them, it’s perfectly logical. So a belief is related, but a screen is usually a connection of beliefs connected together.

Kris Safarova  05:34

Mark and how can we identify within ourselves that some of our screens that we currently using are not serving

Mark Matson  05:40

us all screens are not negative, right? So we have empowering screens and we have disempowering screens. And a disempowering screen is a screen that turns you into a person who is entitled, A person is full of fear, a person who is feels like a victim, a person that is shut down and unable to take action. And I’ll give you an example in my personal life. So many years ago, I had severe asthma, and they put me on prednisone as a treatment, and I got a disease called osteonecrosis and in my hips. And what that means is the bone is literally dying. And I was very young. I was in my early 30s, and so the screen that I had adopted going through that process, and it just was, just like instant, was why me? You know, people that end up with losing their hips are in their 60s or 70s or 80s, not in their 30s. And why has this happened to me? So it was a victim Type screen that I started to see the whole world through, you know. Then there was all kinds of, you know, catastrophizing. I’m, you know, thinking about all the terrible things. I’m not going to be able to play with my kids, I’m not going to be able to exercise, I’m not going to be able to do all this stuff. And I went into a very negative spiral, and all those beliefs were connected in the screen called, Why me victimization. And then I went to a doctor for treatment for blood. They thought maybe it had something to do with the blood, so I’ll go it into this blood doctor. And he was also a cancer doctor with children, and there were like 10 kids set up with chemotherapy, and they and they were all taking chemo, and they’re playing and coloring their comic books and playing with cars, and they were laughing and they were joking with each other. And I thought, man, Mark, you are really self absorbed, and you don’t get to live a life without pain and challenge and some suffering along the way. You know why those little kids, those little kids, are going through a living hell. You know may, may not survive, and you’re saying, why you so that screen shifted from why me to why not me? Why not me? Well, I’m not special. I don’t get to live a life without pain, without sorrow, without struggle. So that changed everything for me, and I was willing. I was able to go in and get my surgery. Had both of my hips replaced, I did therapy, I got counseling. Now I’m 62 years old, and since my early 30s, I’ve had these hips, and I have a full and amazing life, but I had to take action. Why me was giving me no action pain and suffering? And then why not me was giving me the ability to take action and create the life I wanted to create. So that’s an example, and I’ve had many in business. For example, starting up a business. We have as you said, 12 billion of assets under management and 80 employees. But when I started, I had three employees, and I wanted to grow and I wanted to help more people. I had maybe 100 million under management, and I wanted to help more people, but I had a belief, a screen about employees, which were, they’re expensive. You can’t trust them. They’re not creative. I can do it probably better myself. So it was basically a screen or set of beliefs that employees suck, and so that allowed me to not take risk, to be right, to be arrogant, to be condescending, to not have hard conversations, to not have to risk my money and hire people. And when I saw that negative impact, that negative outcome of the screen, the outcome was that I would never be able to grow and help more people. So I switched the screen to employees are awesome. I just have to find the right ones, and then I have to train and develop them. So two different screens, do employees suck? Well, they do, if you say they do, or are employees Awesome? Well, they are, if you say they’re awesome, and you train them and develop them, it can’t be that all employees suck, because you have companies with hundreds 1000 employees. So just two examples in business and in personal life, how screens you can shift your screen. Screen. You’re not stuck with any screen that you have.

Kris Safarova  10:02

I’m so sorry you had to go through it, and I’m so glad you’re okay. And thank you so much for sharing this. The next insight I wanted to focus on is how people rush toward answers instead of fully confronting the problem. And you spoke about how most of the issues with my new life, or many issues, come from a refusal to sit with the problem long enough, and I think also often we don’t even understand what the real problem is. We’re solving the wrong problem. What would you like to share on this topic?

Mark Matson  10:33

Most people see tragedy. If you’re going to leave a live a bold life and you’re going to make a difference for other people, you’re going to have to take risk along the way, and some of those risks will turn out great, and you’ll have massive success, and you’ll see that as a victory. Oh, well, I took that risk, I invested that million dollars, and this had a great result, and I grew my business or but then you’ll use those other examples where you will take risk in business, and you’ll invest a lot of money, time, energy, effort, focus, and maybe have this sense of certainty, like, I’m really good, it’s going to really make me a lot of money. This is really going to work, and then it doesn’t. And but both of those are valuable because one is showing you what worked, and the other one is showing you what didn’t work, and then you can black box the thing that didn’t work. So, I mean, so the thing that doesn’t work, maybe it’s a marketing campaign. Either I’m going to change slightly, change the marketing campaign approach, or I’m going to just get rid of it all together. And I think a lot of especially business people, get stuck with being emotionally and intellectually identifying with the projects that they try, and they put a bunch of money into them, and sometimes it doesn’t work. And instead of just saying, Well, that didn’t work, that was a unique experiment, I’m going to ditch that and try something different. They get attached to the past and attached to what they’ve tried to do in the past, and they just keep sinking more money into a bad project. And that’s a kiss of death. That’s a kiss of death for a an entrepreneur or a consultant, anybody that’s trying to build a business. The other thing is that you have to change. You don’t what got you where you I coach advisors all the time that maybe got to 100 million or 200 million under management, and they feel like they’ve arrived and they’ve done a good job building their business. But what got you where you are right now is not going to get you to the future, because everything’s changing way too fast. With AI and other forms of technology. A lot of lot of things that were done individually or done as a consultant or done as a practitioner, maybe practice accounting or training, even training and development, a lot of that’s going to be outsourced to AI. You got to provide something that that AI is not going to be able to provide because everyone’s got it. So by all means, use it, but don’t depend on it for your future, because everyone’s going to have access. It’s like this, this show right now, the podcast, anybody can get access to a podcast. It’s how you use it and how smart you are behind it. That’s going to make a difference. So I’m always looking at what didn’t work, and I’m always looking at why, why did it not work? Because that has the seed then of the thing that’s going to work in the future. So I don’t look at it as failure or success. I look at everything in business as an experiment, and did I get the intended outcome, and if not, I have to, I have to shift and have to be willing to do that fast mark.

Kris Safarova  13:46

And you mentioned that business owners make a mistake of investing in a project that is obviously a failure, but then at the same time, you can see so many people who succeeded after 1015, years of trying and failing that thing in in the field. How do you think about it in terms of when it makes sense to continue investing and just maybe the matter of time you need to figure it out, you need to get better before you can succeed, versus when you see no, this is a waste of time, we need to move on.

Mark Matson  14:16

Yeah, it’s great. Well, it points to and there are a lot of I mean, my my story was one of working a long time before I had the first billion dollars under management, and many, many, many years of trying to get to that first billion. The thing is that most people miss is it’s the best investment you can make. Is not in a technology, is not in a piece of software, is not in a marketing program. The best investment you can make is in yourself. So as you’re trying to grow the business, you have to grow and a lot of people stop their self development after. College, they don’t have great consultants, they don’t have great mentors, they don’t have great coaching. They stop learning, and they start, start getting really myopically focused on just what little piece of the world their their business is in. And I think that’s a dangerous thing for entrepreneurs. You have to constantly improve yourself, your abilities, and specifically in your abilities of leadership. And I think leadership is highly misunderstood, leaders, most leaders, most people are spying to be a leader. Think that you create leadership by creating followers, and the way that you actually create leadership is by creating more leaders. And that’s why most people don’t, don’t ever really achieve that level of leadership that they aspire but if you have a great idea, you know, and you keep hammering at that idea, that’s great. But your your your methodology, of your methodology, or the strategies you’re using. Must adapt. And you know when we started, when I, for example, when I started this business in 1991 we had overhead projector and we had a yellow pad that was our marketing. And we had no cell phones, we had no internet. We had definitely didn’t have smartphones. We didn’t have podcasts, we didn’t have zoom we didn’t have we didn’t even have, we didn’t even have email. I remember having a Rolodex and sending stuff over the fax. And when I first started, we didn’t even have a fax machine. We we literally just had a FedEx stuff if we wanted it there the next day. So all these technologies are going to come. And all these technologies if you want a business over 30 years, and you have to find a way to navigate all the technologies and still keep the core values of your company and focused on, for example, ours are to help people stop eliminating, eliminating speculating and gambling with their money and then prudently invest for their purpose in life and and to protect their family, so that that’s ironclad for for 34 years. But the strategies that we’ve used to fulfill on that that has to change and evolve over time, of

Kris Safarova  17:15

course, Mark and how do you identify that you actually figured out what is the right problem to solve the fixed situation?

Mark Matson  17:24

So that’s a great question. I don’t think you have to worry about which problem. I think what you want to worry about is which problem lights you up. So there’s all kinds of problems, right? There’s so many different problems, whether it’s fitness problems or whether health problems, or whether it’s money problems or relationship problems or marriage problems or faith problem. I mean, there are so many problems. Pick one, it’s the one. It’s the one that lights you up that you would say I would spend the rest of my life working to solve this one problem, and knowing that technology is going to change, and knowing that the world is going to change, and knowing that economics are going to change and wars are going to change, and presidents are going to change, and political parties are going to change, and it’s all going to change, but I’m willing to dedicate My next 30 years of my life too, because I’m passionate about it, and then fill it in. And so I don’t think you have to find the right problem. I think you have to find the problem that inspires you to dedicate your life to it.

Kris Safarova  18:34

That is a great answer, and I’m glad that you understood my question that way, because that was also very important question to ask, but the question I was trying to ask is going back to that insight, how people rush toward answers instead of fully confronting the problem. If you look at a particular challenge, let’s say a business, all of a sudden doesn’t have as many client inquiries. You’re doing everything you’re always done. You’re adding a lot of value, and all of a sudden you have this issue. How do you identify the right problem?

Mark Matson  19:04

The answer that’s in the question, which is having the and I’m always, I’m always preaching this to the people I coach. You have to have the courage to acknowledge when something isn’t actually working, and the way that you have to do it is what you pointed to. You have to look at the numbers. You cannot ignore the numbers. And a lot of people don’t know their numbers. They don’t know their income, they don’t know their price earning ratio, they don’t know their debt. They don’t know because they’re just not on top of it. Maybe they don’t have a finance degree, or maybe they don’t have an accounting degree, but they ignore it. And when they see you can’t ignore the early signs of failure, and it’s but when you see it, it has to be addressed, and it has to be addressed immediately. And that is a very thing, the very tough thing. And I equate this to problems with employees, and you have this, I like to call it this gut feeling. And you’re walking in the business, and you’re seeing somebody in the hall, and you’re thinking, ooh, I don’t even want to talk to them right now, you know? I just want to ignore the situation. And it’s easy to do, but if you ignore those situations, and you start to get that bad feeling that the relationship or the employee’s not right, you you have to act. And so I’m I’m slow to hire make sure I get the right people. But a lot of success in business is based on the the leaders you have in your company and the employees you have in your company. If you’re afraid to address conflict, and you just kind of sweep it under the rug, that’s a that’s a recipe for disaster, and then looking at a project and looking at your business model, it you’ll know if it’s not working, because you’re right. You’ll have less clients, you’ll have less revenue, you’ll have worse relationships, you’ll have more complaints about your services or your products, and nothing gold stays forever, that’s for sure. And and I think that’s where businesses get in trouble. I always tell, tell our advisors, look, you have got to identify the problems. You have got to look for them. And the way that I view it as is that no one is I am not in this is my screen. I am not entitled to the future. No matter what i No matter of what I succeeded in in the past entitles me to win in the future. And I have to evolve my business. Basically, I have to redo it every three years, or re imagine it and read and transform it. Because if I’m not transforming my business, other people are going to be working to transform my business out of it. It’s, it’s, it’s radical self analysis of my business and myself, and never assuming that what I did in the past entitles me to win in the future and not being and not being well. Let me say it differently. You can be afraid of having the conversation with somebody when something’s not working. You can be afraid of it, but what you cannot do is ignore it, and if you ignore it, that’s where your business starts to go under.

Kris Safarova  22:05

Definitely mark you know how you can take someone who is very successful and put them in another city, even in another country, where they don’t speak the language, give them $100 and tell them to build the business in this industry they know nothing about. So they have no experience in that industry, and they’re still going to be successful. Within a year, they will start rising up and drop and up and up. What do you think changed in your mindset as you continue to become more and more successful? Some critical changes that could be helpful for people, because if someone changes their mindset, their life will start adjusting as well.

Mark Matson  22:38

You see when I started the business that my goal was very, very focused. That was I worked in a broker dealer, and I wanted to help people manage their money. And I was being told three things, that stock picking, trying to pick the best stocks, and market timing, trying to predict when to get in and out of the market based on news and economics and so forth, and that if I didn’t know how, if I didn’t have those skills personally, then I could fire up, find someone with a great track record and hire them, and they’d do it for me. And that’s what I was taught in college, and that’s also what I was taught by my broker dealer. And what I discovered really quickly after like three or four years, was that that was completely bankrupt. It didn’t work. No one could pick all the best stocks or any of the best stocks in advance. That’s why it’s 95 85% of the people trying, even the professional managers who tried to beat the S and P failed to beat the S and P over a 25 year period, 85% and those 15% that got lucky don’t repeat, don’t have any statistical relevancy to repeat in the future. So the market is very efficient, very random, and stock picking, market timing and track record investing didn’t work. So my business model was highly focused on helping people see the science behind investing and then eliminate those things from the investing process, and then be able to invest their money for their dreams. So that’s how it started. And that worked great, and it still works great, but I started to see along the way that that wasn’t enough, and that the mission that I wanted to have for our company was much, much greater, because I saw people with a lot of money, millions of dollars. My largest client at that point had $5 million and she was miserable, miserable, always afraid of terrible things happening and bad relationships and always complaining and always just a very, very miserable person. And then I had another person with about $500,000 and she was very happy and and I thought, What is going on here, if money doesn’t make you happy? And it’s it seemed that it didn’t then, then helping people grow their money, maybe you just actually. Makes them have more stress and anxiety, because there’s potentially more to lose, and they fret over it more. And so then I started saying, wait a minute, if just having more money doesn’t make you happy, what could actually really help people? And I discovered that purpose the critical nature of having a purpose for your money and your life, and then attach attaching that to the American dream and being of service to your family and others, that that sense of fulfillment comes not from the amount of money in your bank account, but from how you’re living your life. And so I expanded the business model to train and develop people so that they could actually have an extraordinary life and discover for themselves what their purpose is, and then manage their money appropriately. So it’s expanding. I think every business, if you’re going to have a long term success rate over 30 years, you’re going to have to expand what you view your actual business as. So 30 years ago, I thought train. I thought, you’re a money manager. Today, I look at it as we’re a training and development company. And those are the types of transformations I think companies are slow to make, especially my industry, but critical in the long run.

Kris Safarova  26:14

And personally, do you feel there were any shifts in how you view the world?

Mark Matson  26:22

I view the world? Yes, there is, I think when I started, I thought that not to be metaphysical on you, but I think I thought people are basically good. People basically want the best for each other, and any conflicts in life are the result, like wars, for example, are a result of people just not communicating well with each other. And that was a belief I picked up when I was very, very young, probably 11 or 12 years old, and I kept that through some of my early childhood. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that there is good in the world, but I also equally believe that there is evil in the world, and that ultimately, not only do you want to build a business where you are willing to to work hard in that to fulfill and be willing to lose money because you love that solving that problem that you you mentioned, but Now I think of it almost as a life mission. You know, there are, there are people getting killed. You know this Charlie Kirk thing, there are people that are actually getting killed for their beliefs and their values and what they what they cherish, and there is for So, from the way that I look at it, there is good in the world, but there is also evil in the world. And if you believe, if you have a stand for that, that’s a stand that you would have so strongly that you would actually be willing to commit your life to that, including your freedom of speech, which you got from the declaration of our our country, and that that that you’re standing up to fight against things that are destroying the American economy, destroying families and that, and that’s a very different way of looking at the world than I did when I was 20 years old. Now I feel like for people that believe in America and want to have the American Dream for their family, that the American Dream is under attack, and families are under attack, and that there is good in the world and there is evil in the world. And if brave men and women don’t stand up against the things that could destroy this country and destroy their American dream, that’s all evil needs to win evil, and that’s the way I view the world. Now. Doesn’t mean everyone has to view the world like that, but you asked for me personally. And when I first started the company, I thought people were basically good, but the reality is that there are a lot of socio sociopaths in the world. There are a lot of narcissist in the world, and those people don’t have any feelings. They don’t have any empathy for other people, and sometimes other people that live next door to you. Sometimes those are people that are, you know, presidents of a country or a dictator and there. So there is really evil in the world there. And I think for me, I wake up every day thinking, how can we fight against the evil that tries to destroy families, and, you know, save Western culture, and Western culture is critical for the American dream. And I’m a huge believer in the American dream. I’m a big believer that the American Dream is great for the whole world. You know, if more people believed in freedom and free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble, freedom of owning property, freedom of owning if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re building a business, you’re a consultant building a business, you have to have the American dream in place. You have to have all those principles that I just mentioned. And there are people, religions, governments, that want to destroy freedom of. Speech and want to destroy your ability to create and express the Communist Manifesto in a communist society, you don’t have a you’re not you don’t be you’re not a consultant. You’re not going to have a consulting business. You’re not going to be an entrepreneur that’s all owned by the state, and you have no freedom of expression. We couldn’t make this podcast in Iran right now, we couldn’t make it in China, we or at least we’d be in jail. We’d be in a gulag somewhere, or in prison somewhere. So freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of it’s one of the greatest freedoms, and that you talked about the screens and being an entrepreneur is a gift, and it’s something that you should if you are an entrepreneur, you get to wake up every morning and be grateful that you live in this country. This country where it’s great. You can express yourself. A painter expresses themselves by making a piece of art. Or a sculptor, an entrepreneur, their self expression lives in their business, and their self expression like this podcast and that is very unique to this country, and we can talk about anything we want to on this podcast, and that’s that’s a gift, and is only possible in a country like this.

Kris Safarova  31:10

I 100% agree with you. We need to protect the American dream, and it is critically important for the whole world. What do you think our listeners can do to protect the American dream,

Mark Matson  31:22

I think the best thing you can do to protect the American Dream is start with your family. We have something in our class. We have a two day class on experiencing the American dream. It’s called the no talk rule, and in the no talk rule, you usually get that from your your family of origin. It’s kind of like it’s taboo to talk about money, how much we make, how we spend it, how we invest it, you know, how much the car costs. You know, don’t talk about money. You know, we don’t want to. We either were ashamed of it, we don’t have enough, or we’re ashamed of it, we have too much. And there’s a lot of resentment, anger, jealousy around money and families. And I think the first place to start is to determine if you have the no talk rule in your family around money, and then look at the destructive nature of that no talk rule and decide if you’re committed to breaking that, and if you are committed to breaking that, then you want to start having these kind having these conversations about the purpose for your family, your faith, capitalism, free markets, how wealth is created, how hard work is a not an option, but it actually builds character. Hard work isn’t just to make money. Hard work as a virtue of its own self. Then you have all these conversations your family, which strengthen your family. And then what in what your faith is. I think faith is, faith is absolutely critical, because there are so many, but you’re going to worship something. It’s either going to be money or power or prestige or or or God, but it’s going to be something a lot of and a lot of people right now today, it’s sad. They’re worshiping speculating and gambling, not just on their apps for their portfolio, but it’s one of the fastest growing, I think, sicknesses in America, which is sports betting and gambling, and they’re doing it on their cell phones, and it’s very destructive, and it’s very addictive, and it’s growing like crazy in the in this society. And that’s, again, one of those things that I think is evil and very destructive. Mark.

Kris Safarova  33:33

Do you have any advice for our listeners on how to protect themselves, their families from evil?

Mark Matson  33:39

I think the I think the best one, just gonna hit you straight with it. I read my Bible. I get out my Bible, I read my Bible, I go to church. And I, as a man, I view it as my job. And my family is to lead my family. And if you don’t lead your family, someone else is going to lead them. It’s going to be the media, it’s going to be YouTube, it’s going to be video games. It’s going to be the outside world that’s going to take over and take your family in a certain direction. And it could be a very destructive direction. And I’ve seen families ripped apart. I think that there’s an attack on since I talk about the American dream so much, I think there’s an attack on our children, you know, they want to take the, you know, minds of our children. And I have a daughter. Her name is Amanda, and she went to college. I sent her to the University of Chicago, cousin their masters and their PhD level. They talk a lot about free markets and free market economy economics. So she went there. In her very first year, she had a class on communism, and that professor, she did not regurgitate what everybody else was saying was communism is the way forward, and communism is superior to capitalism and free markets. Kris, and she was and she had 25 kids in the class, and she was the only person in the class that believed in free markets and capitalism. And she said, I don’t know what I’m going to do, dad. I’m going to get an F. And I said, well, then you get enough, you know, and we’ll find a new college next year. But we and that happened in my family too, with some of my my other siblings, my dad trained us to believe in the markets, trained to believe in freedom, trained us to believe in capitalism, hard work, creativity, competition and not socialism and not communism. But when you send your kids off to college, they try to unwind that, and it’s an attack on your children. And they start when they’re extremely young. It doesn’t start, you know, when they’re in college. It starts a lot of times in grade school. So protecting your children and educating your children, and not letting society do it, I think, is a key to having a healthy family.

Kris Safarova  35:59

I remember last time we spoke, you mentioned some of the advice your father shared, and it was brilliant. What are some of the key things you live by?

Mark Matson  36:09

Yeah, he said, nobody knows you owes you anything except he didn’t say anything. He said the S word. He said, You know nobody owes you anything. You you the only way you deserve anything in this life is if you first create value for other people, and if you’re willing to create value for other people, then you deserve something back in return. So a lot of people are always like, what’s in it for me, and how do I make more money? That’s the wrong question. Is, how can I serve other people? And if you want to make a million dollars a year, then you have to take a step back and go, Okay, I want to make a million dollars a year. So now what do I have to bring to society that’s worth a million dollars a year, and then back into that and back into that number so you don’t deserve anything that’s number one. Number two is you’re not entitled to anything that you didn’t build and create. Number three is if you want something in your life, like the American dream or money, you first create for so for me, I want the American dream, for me, my family, right, and for my clients and my advisors and everybody, but the way that I create my American dream is by helping other people create their American dream. And if I can help enough other people create their American dream, I don’t have to worry about mine. Mine just naturally happens as a result of creating theirs. The other thing that my dad taught me, and he some of these, a lot of these lessons weren’t just spoken, they just just were how we live life. We didn’t have a lot of money. In fact, I went back to Cincinnati, and I live in Scottsdale now, and I took a picture of our little house. It’s like 1200 square feet. I mean, it was really small for that, for that day and age. And, you know, I looked at that little house and we were happy. We had the American dream. We had love, we had we had fun, we had creativity, we had passion. You know, we had adventures. You know, we jump into the car and drive down to Florida and live in a tent, you know, for vacation. So we didn’t, you know, we weren’t staying at the Ritz or the or the four seasons, but, but we had a sense of optimism about the world. We had a patriotic view of the world. We had the we believed in America. We believed in the freedoms that we have, and that that part was just constantly poured into us. Constantly. You can create anything you want in life if you’re willing to help enough other enough other people get what they want in life. And that was really central. And he taught me the value of hard work. He said, Look, I remember it would snow in Cincinnati in the winter, and, man, it would be nasty. And then school would get canceled, and all the other kids in my grade, in my in my school, they grabbed their sleds and they go, you know, sledding and and my dad would go to work, and he’d hand me a snow shovel. And I said, What’s What’s this? He said, Well, you’re going to shovel our driveway and our sidewalk, and then you’re going to go ask the neighbors if they would like help with their sidewalk and their their driveway and and I would, and I would do it all day long. I’d Freeze, freeze like crazy. And some people would pay me, you know, they give me a couple bucks. Some people would just give me a cookie and some hot chocolate. Some people didn’t have any money at all, and they just shook my hand and thanked me. And that taught me. He said, Look, you’re doing this work for you to develop yourself, not to make yourself rich or not. So you’ll have more money to go out and buy more toys. And that really taught me a lesson about the value of hard work, no matter what area you’re in, and for people that are starting up in companies, I had a one of my videos, one of the question was, I’m a young mother, and I’m trying to figure out, you know how to make money and how to grow so here’s, here’s how you do it. And. And a lot of people don’t want to hear this, if you’re not going to start your own business, and you don’t have to, what you want to do is you want to, you want to go to work at a company, and maybe you have to start at the bottom. You know, we have 80 employees. A lot of our top level executives started very, very low in the organization. We may some of them. We only had, like, three or four employees anyway, so it was not like we had this big organization. You could climb a ladder, but, you know, some of them started up, you know, just main, like in janitorial type stuff here, or being the receptionist, and just the lowest level you could have for whatever job it was. And they worked hard and they developed themselves. And as an entrepreneur, I’m always looking for that, no matter where you start. And if you work hard, if you’re the hardest worker there, and hard work doesn’t cost you anything except just you got to show up and have the attitude. Then the entrepreneur, the people you work with, they’re going to start giving you promotions, and then if you keep developing yourself and work on how you’ll get more promotions. So you can do that by changing firms, but you can also do that from starting in a great firm with a great entrepreneur that has vision and then working like crazy. And you will go up that ladder and you will expand and grow your income and grow your opportunities.

Kris Safarova  41:22

Very true. You also speak about how freedom is created by disciplined systems, not personal willpower.

Mark Matson  41:30

Yes, I’m a big, big believer in having an awesome coach. My dad said, Look, you. Success is when my dad thinks success is easy. Most people want to make it way complicated. But you pick, you pick an area of your life you want to be successful in. Maybe it’s fitness. You want to get fit. Especially we’re getting here at the end of the year, a lot of people make a New Year’s resolution, I’m going to get in shape this year, right this? Lot of them said the same thing last year. They’re gonna get in shape, right? So number one, find someone who already knows how to do it, who has already done it and proven over time they can do it. So number one, find somebody. Number two, either get that pay the money, and sometimes you’re gonna have to pay them money to be your coach or trainer. Sometimes they’ll do it for free, because there’s a lot of great people that just are mentoring people, and then do what they say to do. And this is where most people fail. They don’t do what they say to do, or they do it for a very small, limited time. If it’s fitness, it’s not who gets in the gym on January too. It’s still who’s in the gym on December 31 that’s how you create the success. And so any area of life, whether it’s business, faith, fitness, any, any, anything in life, find someone who’s already achieved what you want to achieve, and then get them to be your coach. And and there’s, and I always say it’s about being coachable. And people, people, I always ask people, you think you’re coachable? And they always, oh, yeah, I’m coachable. Well, let me explain what coachable is. So once you hire your coach or your mentor, there’s three levels. Number one is they’re going to tell you to do things that you agree with. You go, oh, yeah, that sounds great. I’ll do that. I got it. I’ll do that. The second level is, they’ll tell you something to do, and you’re not sure about it. I don’t really know if I want to do that, or I’m not really sure if that’s going to work for me. And I call it the Yeah, buts they got Yeah, but, but sometimes people will push through that and go, you know, I’m not sure, but I’ll try it. I’ll try it for 30 days. I’ll see how it works. Then they have the third level of coachability. This is you disagree. They tell you to do something, and you don’t want to do it. You’re committed not to do it. I’ve either tried it before and it didn’t work, or that won’t work for me. It works for other people, or I don’t want to do it because I’m too busy and or I’m too tired, or I don’t know enough money, or it’s whatever excuse. You’ll either have results or you have excuses, you’ll have one or the other, but, but finding that coach that has already done it and then committing to do exactly what they say to do, whether you agree or not, Coach ability is like a superpower for entrepreneurs and for anybody but. But my experience is few people actually have it. Lot of people think they have it. I had a discussion with a guy today about it. He said he was a nine or a 10 out of 10. I said, you’re probably a two, so you got to be coachable, and that’s another thing that my dad trained me to do.

Kris Safarova  44:56

And what will be your advice on getting a cliff. Future for you, and then aligning your actions with who you want to become.

Mark Matson  45:04

First of all, you get your purpose. That’s number that’s number one. So that’s your purpose for your money, and your purpose for your life, then based on your purpose. So mine is to create the help people create the American dream and basically save Western culture. That’s my purpose. Okay? Now? Then I look three years in the future, looking back to today, and I say, Okay, what would my life be like three years in the future, having fulfilled that purpose and committed myself to that purpose? What? And then I look at different areas of my life, what would it look like in fitness, what would it look like in faith? What would it look like in my business? What would it look like in my relationship with my wife? What would it look like as a father? What would it look like as a Christian? What would it look like? So then, then I can start looking and say, Okay, here’s what it looks like three years in the future from today, and I got to go into the future to look at that, and then I can move, move myself backwards and say, Okay, well, here’s what it looks like three years from now. What does it got to look like two years from now? Was it? What does it have like look like a year from now and then? What coaches do I need to hire? What? What strategies they’re going to help me with my strategies. If I get a great coach, they’re going to help me with the strategy, and then they’re going to help me stay motivated, to stay on track. But it’s my responsibility to lay out what my purpose is, and then what my life is going to look like, and then I got to go out and find the right people to help train and develop me and coach me to get to that purpose. And they’ll also help find a good one. They’ll also help with the strategy. I had a talk one time with Michael Phelps, and you know the best one more Nobel win, more gold medals at the Olympics than anybody else ever in the history of the world, 28 different medals. And he said that he swam seven days a week, no matter other people would take off for holidays. He didn’t take off for holidays. His coach would say things like, jump in the deep end of the pool with the 45 pound weight, hold it to your chest, and then do a dolphin kick. Keep your head above water for 45 minutes and and he would do what his coach said to do, even if he didn’t want to do it. And that’s, that’s, that’s the kind of discipline that you have to have, but you don’t have to do it alone. What you want to know is that if you’ve ever tried to do anything that you thought you were committed to, and it had and it was short lived, it’s because of instincts and emotions and biases that that pull us back into the past and don’t allow us to follow through on our commitments. You can either have your commitment or you can have your comfort, but you’re going to have to choose one, because your commitment will definitely require you to get out of your comfort zone in a lot of different ways. So are you willing to give up your comfort? It could be your physical comfort. It could be your risk. Comfort could be your number of hours you’re working. Comfort could be a lot of different areas that you’re you’ve, especially if you’re older, you know, your 40s, 50s, 60s. It’s like, oh, I’m comfortable doing it this way, I get that. But is your commitment Bigger, bigger than your comfort? And that that’s how you can keep going? I think one of the worst things for people to do is retire. I hope, never, ever, ever to retire. I hope I now. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to take off and, you know, explore Europe and and go on vacations and, you know, adventures, and that’s great. That’s great. But people that I know that die fast are the people that retire because their purpose ends up getting diminished. Their thought processes, they’re not thinking, they’re not planning, they’re not creating the happiest people I know don’t retire, and even if they were working at a fortune 500 company or something like that. They then they take on consulting jobs, or they take on other things in their life, but they never stop, and I think stopping is one of the worst things you can do for your future.

Kris Safarova  49:12

Mark, thank you so much for being here. We could talk for hours person. Thank you for all the work you’re doing. Thank you for the book you wrote. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Buy your book, anything you want to share. Yeah.

Mark Matson  49:25

I mean, you can grab my book and a little shameless self promotion. Here you can grab the book experiencing the American dream. You can get it on here you go this way. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it on Barnes and Noble. You can get it online anywhere you want to. It’s a six times national bestseller, if you in. I created a two day workshop called the American Dream experience. For those of you that want to learn more and take the workshop, we can get you registered for the two day workshop. We have them both live here in Scottsdale, and we have virtual editions and. But grab a copy of the book. Some of these strategies and more are in the book. I swore I’d never write another book, but took me long time to write it. I ran it, I got an Airstream and I went out in the desert for about a year. Every day I’d go out there and ride in the desert. So I hope you enjoy it. It’s a, it’s a, if you want to learn about the American dream and use some of these strategies we talked about and learn how to prudently invest, it’s a good place to start. Definitely, Mark, thank you so much. You’re welcome. Thanks. Thanks for having me

Kris Safarova  50:35

on our guest today, again, was Mark Mattson. His book is experiencing the American dream, and our podcast sponsor today is strategy training.com you can get some gifts from us. You can access episode one of how to build a consulting practice, and you can get it at firms consulting.com forward slash build. You can also get a copy of McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a resume that led to offers from both of those firms, and that template works at any level of seniority. And you can get it at firms consulting.com forward slash resume PDF. And you can also get overall approach used in well managed strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.